Fish_chips Black ice is a strong film, with excellent characterisation, plot development, and filming; in fact it won seven Finnish Jussi (film industry) awards in 2008 including Best Film, Best Director, Best Script, Best Editing, Best Music, and Best Actress. The wife who is misled by her husband decides to play a complex game, but as the plot unfolds she develops dual feelings of both friendship and revenge towards her husband's mistress. Our feelings towards the mistress are bounced around too because she is quite happy to be a participant in the plot of deception she and the husband are engaged in, but then we find she herself becomes an unknowing target in the wife's plan of deception. The wife seems to have a fondness for knives (kitchen, gym props, and scalpels) and this gives the film a further degree of bite. Which of the 'friend or foe' feelings held by the wife will be triumphant by the end of this very fine film?

Armand who is the victim ? that is question who gives sense of movie. the fragile husband ? the cold powerful wife ? the young mistress ? innocent can be only the baby. so, a film like a labyrinth. no doors, no windows. shadow of Almodovar and crumbs of Bergman. a story and its plains. dark humor and slices of ambiguous fight. jealousy, refuges, empty friendship and survive. cruelty of revenge in spider way and two women as borders of circle. a film as catch. about snow and ice and need of certitudes and fall. about limits and image of the other. about lies as fermented feelings and slide of looks. series of shadows and complicated construction. happy-end as fruit of profound peace. silence from womb of strange war.

troche-5 PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER, the Finnish movie "Black Ice" (Kotwica) thrilled us in 2008. A dangerous love triangle that goes from bad to worse is filled with deception, suspense and an imminent cat-fight. The main three actors were picked perfectly for their roles; Saara (Outi Mäenpää) is a middle aged doctor who seems to be happily married to Leo (Martti Suosalo) who is an architect/professor. Leo is having an affair with the much younger Tuuli (Ria Kataja) who happens to be one of his students. Saraa becomes suspicious of her husband as she finds a packet of condoms missing. By pure luck while visiting Leo after a rough day at work she stumbles upon an inappropriate email Leo received from a student which happens to be Tuuli. Instead of confronting Leo like an average, sane human being she decides to do a little investigating and follows her around. Tuuli leads her to a gym where she teaches KARATE!! This scene immediately put a smile on my face because I for saw an epic cat fight. Saraa decides to take Tuuli's karate class and after class she hides Tuuli's bike so she'll need a ride home. After this point these two women are inseparable as Saraa creates a new identity to prevent Tuuli from finding out who she is. Get ready for the deception and interconnecting story lines as the three take turns hanging out with each other.Deception is the most reoccurring theme seen throughout the movie mostly between Tuuli and Saraa. Saraa befriends Tuuli so she can learn first hand about her relationship with Leo and possibly save the marriage. This was a great twist in the story because you have the Antagonist and Protagonist together but only one is aware of the truth. Saraa does a great job convincing Tuuli how genuine she is but really has an agenda the whole time. Throughout the movie they have some close encounters with Leo which kept me in anticipation for when the truth would come out. For me the interactions between Saraa the wife and Tuuli the home wrecking college girl are what really make this movie.There is also a love triangle that also goes with the deception in this Finnish flick. As Tuuli's relationship with Leo disintegrates she becomes more and more dependant on Saraa and her companionship. Tuuli and Saraa start hanging out a lot and this creates tension between Tuuli and Leo by causing Leo to become jealous. This is the result of Leo finding a used condom in Tuuli's room from when Saraa had sex the night before. Tuuli calls Saraa to have her explain to Leo what happen because he didn't believe her.I think its safe to say that the name of the movie was a theme in itself as black ice in real life is dangerous and misleading like the characters in this movie. Black ice is transparent so when driving it looks like the road is fine but actually it's covered by a slippery sheet of ice. Just like in the movie on the outside the characters seem fine but underneath they have serious issues.While watching the opening scene of the movie for a second time I realized how important it is because it introduces the three main characters that eventually get wrapped up in a love triangle. This scene helps set the belief to the audience that Saara and Leo are very passionate and still in the honeymoon phase. As you watch the movie you find out that this is very misleading and the director does a great job setting this up. Also, I think the end of the clip is where Leo crashes his car and eventually walks off and freezes to death. So with that being said the settings in the 1st scene are actually the same as one of the last. The ending caught me off guard but in a good way and I think it was a fitting way to end it, so if you're looking for a happy ending look some where else.The camera shots to me were very dramatic in this scene especially seeing it for the second time. In one scene you have two people having passionate sex and in the other a girl riding her bike in the cold winter. The focus of the camera during the sex scene uses a lot of close ups on the limbs of the couple showing how intense it is, it goes from sex to heavy foreplay and then to Saraa's face showing her enjoyment. All this is going on as Tuuli is riding the through the winter and the camera follows her journey while showing glimpses of her face as she struggles through the harsh weather."Black Ice" is a very interesting and entertaining movie that is worth watching more than once and would have success in America if redone in English. Watching two woman compete for the love of one man is an idea intriguing enough just to watch it and I guarantee this movie will not disappoint.

Buck Bratager Musta Jää was a great film that had a unique turn of events that not only kept my attention, but revived my faith in the concept of original films. The long and short of the film is that Saara (as played by Outi Mäenpää) suspects her husband Leo (as played by Martti Suosalo) of adultery, so she does some snooping. Not only does she manage to track down his new flame, Tuuli (as played by Ria Kataja), but she actually befriends her, under an assumed name, of course. She then breaks it off with Leo to sow the seeds of friendship in Tuuli, to advance her plot of revenge, as well as get some martial arts training in the meantime. After several (mildly clichéd) girl-power bonding scenes, they become best friends (as far as Tuuli knows), and they try to solve each others' problems, culminating in Saara calling herself and leaving a nasty message on her machine, leading to a restraining order being placed on Tuuli and Leo breaking up with her, effectively ruining her life, especially since it turns out she's pregnant with his baby. However, through a complex, although perfectly plausible, twist of events, Leo accidentally drinks a spiked drink that was meant for Tuuli and ends up freezing to death after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing his car.All in all, this was, in my opinion, a very, very good film, one of the best I've seen this year, in fact. The twists the plot goes through were difficult for me to predict, which, given the number of movies I watch, is no small feat. For example, Saara's actions regarding Tuuli were almost counter-intuitive. I expected a confrontation right away, but instead, a friendship develops. This is something that I've never seen in any other films. Not only do they become friends, but they even have a minor lesbian experience towards the end of the film that was a beautiful combination of surprising and darkly funny, especially because Tuuli does feel a kind of love for Saara, but Saara has a burning hatred of Tuuli. The end of the movie was really good, too. After discovering Saara's plot and learning of Leo's death, Tuuli, in a shot at revenge, goes to the hospital after altering her appearance with hair dye and colored contacts (to avoid detection as she's not allowed in the hospital Saara works in, thanks to the restraining order) to get an abortion, but, after falling down a flight of stairs during a confrontation with Leo's sister (as played by Sara Paavolainen), she ends up getting both her life, and the life of her baby, saved by the now at-peace Saara, who wishes her "nothing but the best." The irony was just perfect. During the entirety of the movie, Saara was looking to kill Tuuli, but she ended up saving her. And it was on purpose, at that, as she recognized Tuuli's tattoo. I just felt that it was a perfectly twisted ending to a delightfully twisted movie. This movie gets good marks from me because, not only did it have an original and unpredictable sequence of events in the plot, but those events were all plausible. Everything that happened in the movie could definitely happen in real life, no question. There weren't any amazing coincidences or divine interventions, just actions and reactions, cause and effect. The choices the characters make are reasonable ones, too. No suicide missions, no flying off the handle, no superfluous, unreasonable aggression. Just people behaving as their situation dictates, yielding some amazing results. Other movies often have a weird turn of events or some crazy,unlikely coincidence to throw off the viewers, but everything here is perfectly plausible, if not likely, which I find most agreeable.Another great thing about this movie is the way it explores the complexities of human interactions. The strange, complex relationships between Tuuli, Saara, and Leo are a perfect example of the classic response adults give children: "It's not that simple." All three of the main characters had mixed emotions for the other two; they all loved and resented each other, albeit in different ways. Saara resented Tuuli for her relationship with Leo, but she still was good friends with her, and you could see how uneasy she was when she finally betrayed her. She also resented Leo for being unfaithful, while simultaneously loving him, as they had been together for a long time and were deeply in love. This same complexity is reciprocated in the other two characters and it not only adds interest to the movie, as you try to decode to what ends the characters are progressing, but it also adds an extra dimension, a sort of sub-plot, as you see not the events that drive the main storyline, but also the ever-shifting opinions of each other that drive the actions in the first place. While I don't agree with the genre of "Psychological Thriller" that this movie was assigned, I do agree that, like in those movies, you really have to put yourself in the characters' shoes, and try to feel what they feel as you watch the movie. This is, to me, just one more reason to like this thoroughly enjoyable movie.